Members

Mihaela Constantinescu is lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, Romania, and executive director of the Research Centre in Applied Ethics (CCEA). Her research areas include virtue ethics, business ethics, Human-Robot Interaction, and AI ethics, with a focus on the normative interplay between the concepts of moral responsibility and moral agency in relation to individuals, organisations, and AI systems. Her articles were published in journals such as Ethics and Information Technology, Philosophy & Technology, International Journal of Social Robotics, Journal of Business Ethics. She is co-author of the book “Institutionalizing ethics: mechanisms and instruments” (in Romanian). 

Role in the project: Mihaela is the PI of the project, with a scientific focus on developing a normative framework for agency and moral responsibility in emergent avatar communities.

Emilian Mihailov is the Director of the Research Centre in Applied Ethics (CCEA) and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest. His research domains are neuroethics, bioethics, and philosophical moral psychology. He has published on the ethics of enhancement and experimental bioethics in leading journals such as American Journal of Bioethics, Science and Engineering Ethics, Bioethics, Consciousness & Cognition. He previously led a national research project dedicated to moral and cognitive enhancement (ENHATEC).

Constantin Vică teaches courses at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, on ethics and politics of new technologies, the philosophy of history – the philosophy of the future, digital culture, etc., and is a researcher at the Research Center in Applied Ethics. He has co-authored articles in Science and Engineering Ethics, Ethics and Information Technology, Philosophy & Technology, International Journal of Social Robotics, Frontiers in Robotics and AI, Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, Philosophical Psychology, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Topoi, etc. In 2019, he co-edited the volume Vremuri noi, vremuri vechi. Jurnal 2007–2013 by Mihail Radu Solcan. In 2023, he published Civilizație algoritmică și viața în lumea digitală (Algorithmic Civilization and Life in the Digital World) with the University of Bucharest Press.

My research focus is on the history of philosophy and science; in particular, on the relations between philosophy, science, and religion in the early modern period. I am interested in new scholarly approaches (Digital Humanities) and different ways of communication and dissemination of research results (Open Science). Beside journal articles and contributed chapters to collective volumes, I published two monographs, co-edited two volumes, and collaborated to the production of two Open Access scholarly editions. I am book review editor at the Centaurus, the Journal of the European Society for the History of Science (ESHS). For more details, including a list of publications, see: https://sites.google.com/g.unibuc.ro/mihneadobre/.

Radu Uszkai teaches Philosophy and Business Ethics at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies where he works as an Assistant Lecturer at the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences. He also works as a researcher at the Research Center in Applied Ethics, University of Bucharest. Radu holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Bucharest since 2015, with a thesis on the ethics of intellectual property and digital piracy. His research is focused on applied ethics (with an emphasis on new and emerging technologies), political philosophy (mainly on classical liberal ideas) and the philosophy of pop culture. He has recently published papers in journals like Philosophy & Technology, Ethics and Information Technology and Frontiers in Robotics and AI. His first book, dedicated to the ethics of copyright, was published in 2024 by Bucharest University Press.

Cristina Voinea is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow and a hosted researcher at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. Her research primarily revolves around understanding the impact of digital technologies on both individual and societal well-being. Cristina’s work delves into a range of critical themes within this domain, including responsibility in the realm of artificial intelligence, the influence of persuasive technologies, and the potential use of technology for cognitive and moral enhancement.

Anda Zahiu is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, and a member of the Research Centre in Applied Ethics. Her current PhD research revolves around issues pertaining to tax and transfer redistributive schemes. She has a background in moral and political philosophy. Anda’s research interests include new and emerging technologies, with a particular focus on Virtual Reality and digital avatars. Her last article was published in Ethics and Information Technology.

Maria Gațe is a M.A. student in Applied Ethics at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest. She is a „Valentin Mureșan” fellow at the Research Centre in Applied Ethics (CCEA). Her research project aims to develop a conceptual framework in which virtual worlds’ design elements influence users’ moral agency and responsibility. Moreover, her research interests also lie in the domains of political philosophy, social epistemology and social philosophy – particularly regarding issues of social and epistemic (in)justice and theories regarding testimony, disagreement and collective belief.